This artist’s impression shows the exotic double object that consists of a tiny, but very heavy neutron star that spins 25 times each second, orbited every two and a half hours by a white dwarf star. As the pulsar is so small the relative sizes of the two objects are not drawn to scale. – ESO/L. Calçada

On February 24, 1968, an astronomy grad student Jocelyn Bell announced that she had discovered the first pulsar. A few months earlier, she noticed what she called a "bit of scruff" in the data from her telescope. A signal was sending pulses every 1.3 seconds. At first she and her advisor, Anthony Hewish, thought it could have come from aliens. They ruled out that option when they found another signal coming from a different part of the sky. Bell and Hewish found four pulsars before publishing their findings, but they still had no explanation. Scientists have since figured out that pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars that radiate narrow beams of light in opposite directions.

A pulsar is a highly magnetized, rotating neutron star or white dwarf, that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation that extends unimaginable distances into space and will annihilate anything in it's path!
Subscribe to Insomnia Team for daily documentaries! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg353zadABLG_HHkt92cI9w
For more Great documentaries check out this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB8MxfrLz2uocbT0hilg-9IsukX8wzfs4
*All rights are reserved to the owners or licensed.*
* It is not intended to violate copyrighted material, which all belongs to its receptive owners. This Video Is Educational Purpose Only.*
Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

Stream Episodes on demand from www.bitesz.com or www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com (both mobile friendly)
*Mysterious white dwarf pulsar discovered
Astronomers have discovered their first white dwarf pulsar. These are a stellar class that has been speculated about for over half a century – but never previously detected.
*Space Junk mission failure
An experimental Japanese mission to help clear space junk from low Earth orbit has failed. The plan involved using a 700 metre long electrodynamic tether to slow bits of space junk down causing the refuse to lose altitude and begin the process of re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.
*Juno’s planned orbital changes dropped
NASA Juno mission will now remain in its existing 53 Earth day orbit around the planet Jupiter -- rather that moving to a lower 14 Earth day orbit as planned. The decision follows problems with two helium check valves on the spacecraft main propulsion system.
*Falcon 9 launch from historic pad
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has made history blasting off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. That’s the same launch pad previously used by the mighty Saturn V Apollo moon rocket and the space shuttle fleet.
For Enhanced Show Notes, including photos to accompany this episode: http://www.bitesz.com/spacetime-show-notes
Subscribe, rate and review SpaceTime at all good podcasting apps…including iTunes, audioBoom, Stitcher, Pocketcasts, Podbean, Radio Public, Tunein Radio, google play, etc.
RSS feed: https://audioboom.com/channels/4642443.rss
NEW: The SpaceTime with Stuart Gary merchandise shop. Get your T-Shirts, Coffee Cups, badges, tote bag + more and help support the show. Check out the range: http://www.cafepress.com/spacetime Thank you.
NEW: Help support SpaceTime and get a free audio book of your choice, plus 30 days free access from audible.com. Just visit www.audibletrial.com/spacetime or click on the banner link at www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com
Email: [email protected]
Join our mailing list at http://www.bitesz.com/join-our-mailing-list
For more, follow SpaceTime on Facebook, twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Google+ and Clammr:
Facebook: @spacetimewithstuartgary
twitter: @stuartgary
Tumblr: http://spacetimewithstuartgary.tumblr.com/
Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/2/collection/cabtNB
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhpBkuHSLfIRnliLB12HoC1QE0rwr8qRS
Clammr: http://www.clammr.com/app/spacetime
If you're enjoying SpaceTime, please help out by sharing and telling your friends. The best recommendation I can get is one from you. Thank you...
#astronomy #space #science #technology #news #astrophysics #spaceX #bitesz #podcast #spacetime

The Lifetime of a Pulsar: Victoria Kaspi at Perimeter Institute

Victoria Kaspi (McGill University) explains the lifespan of neutron stars during her 2016 public lectures at Perimeter Institute, "The Cosmic Gift of Neutron Stars." Watch the full talk: https://youtu.be/6UG9hoeLcHo
Watch more Perimeter public lectures: https://insidetheperimeter.ca/discover/public-lectures/

A Tour of PSR B1259-63/LS 2883

A fast-moving pulsar appears to have punched a hole in a disk of gas around its companion star and launched a fragment of the disk outward at a speed of about 4 million miles per hour.

Geminga - B0355+54

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has taken deep exposures of two nearby energetic pulsars flying through the Milky Way galaxy. The shape of their X-ray emission suggests there is a geometrical explanation for puzzling differences in behavior shown by some pulsars. Pulsars - rapidly rotating, highly magnetized, neutron stars born in supernova explosions triggered by the collapse of massive stars- were discovered 50 years ago via their pulsed, highly regular, radio emission. Pulsars produce a lighthouse-like beam of radiation that astronomers detect as pulses as the pulsar's rotation sweeps the beam across the sky. Since their discovery, thousands of pulsars have been discovered, many of which produce beams of radio waves and gamma rays. Some pulsars show only radio pulses and others show only gamma-ray pulses. Chandra observations have revealed steady X-ray emission from extensive clouds of high-energy particles, called pulsar wind nebulas, associated with both types of pulsars. New Chandra data on pulsar wind nebulas may explain the presence or absence of radio and gamma-ray pulses. The four-panel graphic shows the two pulsars observed by Chandra. Geminga is in the upper left and B0355+54 is in the upper right. In both of these images, Chandra's X-rays, colored blue and purple, are combined with infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope that shows stars in the field of view. Below each data image, an artist's illustration depicts more details of what astronomers think the structure of each pulsar wind nebula looks like. For Geminga, a deep Chandra observation totaling nearly eight days over several years was analyzed to show sweeping, arced trails spanning half a light year and a narrow structure directly behind the pulsar. A five-day Chandra observation of the second pulsar, B0355+54, showed a cap of emission followed by a narrow double trail extending almost five light years. The underlying pulsars are quite similar, both rotating about five times per second and both aged about half a million years. However, Geminga shows gamma-ray pulses with no bright radio emission, while B0355+54 is one of the brightest radio pulsars known yet not seen in gamma rays. A likely interpretation of the Chandra images is that the long narrow trails to the side of Geminga and the double tail of B0355+54 represent narrow jets emanating from the pulsar's spin poles. Both pulsars also contain a torus, a disk-shaped region of emission spreading from the pulsar's spin equator. These donut-shaped structures and jets are crushed and swept back as the pulsars fly through the Galaxy at supersonic speeds. In the case of Geminga, the view of the torus is close to edge-on, while the jets point out to the sides. B0355+54 has a similar structure, but with the torus viewed nearly face-on and the jets pointing nearly directly towards and away from Earth. In B0355+54, the swept-back jets appear to lie almost on top of each other, giving a doubled tail. Both pulsars have magnetic poles quite close to their spin poles, as is the case for the Earth's magnetic field. These magnetic poles are the site of pulsar radio emission so astronomers expect the radio beams to point in a similar direction as the jets. By contrast the gamma-ray emission is mainly produced along the spin equator and so aligns with the torus. For Geminga, astronomers view the bright gamma-ray pulses along the edge of the torus, but the radio beams near the jets point off to the sides and remain unseen. For B0355+54, a jet points almost along our line of sight towards the pulsar. This means astronomers see the bright radio pulses, while the torus and its associated gamma-ray emission are directed in a perpendicular direction to our line of sight, missing the Earth. These two deep Chandra images have, therefore, exposed the spin orientation of these pulsars, helping to explain the presence, and absence, of the radio and gamma-ray pulses.

Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer

NASA has selected a science mission that will allow astronomers to explore, for the first time, the hidden details of some of the most extreme and exotic astronomical objects, such as stellar and supermassive black holes, neutron stars and pulsars. Objects such as black holes can heat surrounding gases to more than a million degrees. The high-energy X-ray radiation from this gas can be polarized – vibrating in a particular direction. The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission will fly three space telescopes with cameras capable of measuring the polarization of these cosmic X-rays, allowing scientists to answer fundamental questions about these turbulent and extreme environments where gravitational, electric and magnetic fields are at their limits.

Fermi Finds First Extragalactic Gamma Ray Pulsar

Researchers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have discovered the first gamma-ray pulsar in a galaxy other than our own. The object sets a new record for the most luminous gamma-ray pulsar known.
The pulsar lies in the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy that orbits our Milky Way and is located 163,000 light-years away. The Tarantula Nebula is the largest, most active and most complex star-formation region in our galactic neighborhood. It was identified as a bright source of gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light, early in the Fermi mission. Astronomers initially attributed this glow to collisions of subatomic particles accelerated in the shock waves produced by supernova .
However, the discovery of gamma-ray pulses from a previously known pulsar named PSR J0540-6919 shows that it is responsible for roughly half of the gamma-ray brightness previously thought to come from the nebula.
Gamma-ray pulses from J0540-6919 have 20 times the intensity of the previous record-holder, the pulsar in the famous Crab Nebula. Yet they have roughly similar levels of radio, optical and X-ray emission. Accounting for these differences will guide astronomers to a better understanding of the extreme physics at work in young pulsars.
Learn more about Pulsars at http://www.spacetv.net/pulsars/
Learn more about Neutron Stars at http://www.spacetv.net/neutron-stars/
Learn more about Stars at http://www.spacetv.net/stars/
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

In late June 2013, an exceptional binary system containing a rapidly spinning neutron star underwent a dramatic change in behavior never before observed. The pulsar's radio beacon vanished, while at the same time the system brightened fivefold in gamma rays, the most powerful form of light, according to measurements by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.
The system, known as AY Sextantis, is located about 4,400 light-years away in the constellation Sextans. It pairs a 1.7-millisecond pulsar named PSR J1023+0038 -- J1023 for short -- with a star containing about one-fifth the mass of the sun. The stars complete an orbit in only 4.8 hours, which places them so close together that the pulsar will gradually evaporate its companion.
To better understand J1023's spin and orbital evolution, the system was routinely monitored in radio. These observations revealed that the pulsar's radio signal had turned off and prompted the search for an associated change in its gamma-ray properties.
What's happening, astronomers say, are the last sputtering throes of the pulsar spin-up process. Researchers regard the system as a unique laboratory for understanding how millisecond pulsars form and for studying details of how accretion takes place on neutron stars.
In J1023, the stars are close enough that a stream of gas flows from the sun-like star toward the pulsar. The pulsar's rapid rotation and intense magnetic field are responsible for both the radio beam and its powerful pulsar wind. When the radio beam is detectable, the pulsar wind holds back the companion's gas stream, preventing it from approaching too closely.
But now and then the stream surges, pushing its way closer to the pulsar and establishing an accretion disk. When gas from the disk falls to an altitude of about 50 miles (80 km), processes involved in creating the radio beam are either shut down or, more likely, obscured. Some of the gas may be accelerated outward at nearly the speed of light, forming dual particle jets firing in opposite directions. Shock waves within and along the periphery of these jets are a likely source of the bright gamma-ray emission detected by Fermi.
Read more at: http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/n...
This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=11609
Subscribe for more Space wonders on ΥουΤυbe: https://tinyurl.com/SpaceTelescopesYouTube

Pulsars are an exotic astronomical object left over from exploding stars. Mysterious as they may be, science has helped us to reveal several facts about these cosmological rogues.

NASA | Fermi Detects First Gamma-ray Pulsar in Another Galaxy

Researchers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have discovered the first gamma-ray pulsar in a galaxy other than our own. The object sets a new record for the most luminous gamma-ray pulsar known.
The pulsar lies in the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy that orbits our Milky Way and is located 163,000 light-years away. The Tarantula Nebula is the largest, most active and most complex star-formation region in our galactic neighborhood. It was identified as a bright source of gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light, early in the Fermi mission. Astronomers initially attributed this glow to collisions of subatomic particles accelerated in the shock waves produced by supernova .
However, the discovery of gamma-ray pulses from a previously known pulsar named PSR J0540-6919 shows that it is responsible for roughly half of the gamma-ray brightness previously thought to come from the nebula.
Gamma-ray pulses from J0540-6919 have 20 times the intensity of the previous record-holder, the pulsar in the famous Crab Nebula. Yet they have roughly similar levels of radio, optical and X-ray emission. Accounting for these differences will guide astronomers to a better understanding of the extreme physics at work in young pulsars.
Read more at http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasas-fermi-satellite-detects-first-gamma-ray-pulsar-in-another-galaxy
This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=12003
Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast:
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/iTunes/f0004_index.html
Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC
Or find us on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard

A neutron star is a rotating, superdense, dead star. A pulsar is a type of neutron star that must be both magnetized and moving very fast, because it spins its magnetic field fast enough to produce a beam of electromagnetic radiation. Astrophysicist Andrea Lommen explains a research study of the binary system known a PSR 1913+16, where a neutron star and a pulsar orbit each other. This study yielded a result that only Einstein would have found unsurprising: gravitational waves must exist!
Original Program Date: June 4, 2010
Watch the full program here: https://youtu.be/Bgi8z0fB6PI
The World Science Festival gathers great minds in science and the arts to produce live and digital content that allows a broad general audience to engage with scientific discoveries. Our mission is to cultivate a general public informed by science, inspired by its wonder, convinced of its value, and prepared to engage with its implications for the future.
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for all the latest from WSF.
Visit our Website: http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/worldsciencefestival
Follow us on twitter: https://twitter.com/WorldSciFest

NASA Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected a never-before-seen change in a binary star system in the constellation Sextants. The pulsar ceased its radio 'beacon' but started bright gamma ray emissions. This animation explains the behavior.
Credit: NASA/GSFC

NASA | Fermi Catches a 'Transformer' Pulsar

In late June 2013, an exceptional binary system containing a rapidly spinning neutron star underwent a dramatic change in behavior never before observed. The pulsar's radio beacon vanished, while at the same time the system brightened fivefold in gamma rays, the most powerful form of light, according to measurements by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.
The system, known as AY Sextantis, is located about 4,400 light-years away in the constellation Sextans. It pairs a 1.7-millisecond pulsar named PSR J1023+0038 -- J1023 for short -- with a star containing about one-fifth the mass of the sun. The stars complete an orbit in only 4.8 hours, which places them so close together that the pulsar will gradually evaporate its companion.
To better understand J1023's spin and orbital evolution, the system was routinely monitored in radio. These observations revealed that the pulsar's radio signal had turned off and prompted the search for an associated change in its gamma-ray properties.
What's happening, astronomers say, are the last sputtering throes of the pulsar spin-up process. Researchers regard the system as a unique laboratory for understanding how millisecond pulsars form and for studying details of how accretion takes place on neutron stars.
In J1023, the stars are close enough that a stream of gas flows from the sun-like star toward the pulsar. The pulsar's rapid rotation and intense magnetic field are responsible for both the radio beam and its powerful pulsar wind. When the radio beam is detectable, the pulsar wind holds back the companion's gas stream, preventing it from approaching too closely.
But now and then the stream surges, pushing its way closer to the pulsar and establishing an accretion disk. When gas from the disk falls to an altitude of about 50 miles (80 km), processes involved in creating the radio beam are either shut down or, more likely, obscured. Some of the gas may be accelerated outward at nearly the speed of light, forming dual particle jets firing in opposite directions. Shock waves within and along the periphery of these jets are a likely source of the bright gamma-ray emission detected by Fermi.
Read more at: http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasas-fermi-finds-a-transformer-pulsar/
This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011600/a011609/
Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast:
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/iTunes/f0004_index.html
Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC
Or find us on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard

The biggest stars burn the fastest and brightest, and when they die, they do so spectacularly, exploding as supernovae and leaving behind some of the most fantastic objects in the universe: neutron stars and black holes. In this public science talk recorded at James Madison University on April 17, 2014, Dr. Scott Ransom (NRAO/UVa) discussed how these crazy objects are created, some of their amazing properties and why we (probably!) don't need to worry about them too much here in our cozy homes on Earth.
To learn more about our public science presentations, and to be informed, when our next ones will take place, please visit our website: http://www.jmu.edu/planetarium

Black Widow Pulsars: The Vengeful Corpses of Stars

Jan. 22, 2014
Dr. Roger Romani (Stanford University)
NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has revealed a violent high-energy universe full of stellar explosions, black hole jets, and pulsing stars. These cosmic objects are often faint when observed with visible light, but glow bright with gamma rays. Dr. Romani describes the quest to discover the true nature of the most puzzling of these gamma-ray sources. Several turn out to be a kind of bizarre star corpse called a 'black widow' pulsar.

Tim Dolch, Cornell University.
The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) aims to detect low-frequency gravitational waves using long-term pulsar observations with the Arecibo Observatory and the Green Bank Telescope. The 42 millisecond pulsars currently in the pulsar timing array are regularly monitored, and searches are underway for a variety of gravitational wave sources, including: a stochastic background of merging supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs), continuous emission from individual SMBHBs, bursts from interacting SMBHBs, and memory bursts from SMBHB mergers. Upper limits on gravitational wave strain have been produced based on the first five years of timing data. Along with collaborators from the International Pulsar Timing Array, NANOGrav has conducted a continuous 24-hour global observation of pulsar J1713+0747 using nine radio telescopes around the world in order to establish the ultimate timing precision of millisecond pulsars. Connections to the recent BICEP2 announcement about gravitational waves will also be discussed.

NASA | A Black Widow Pulsar Consumes its Mate

Black widow spiders and their Australian cousins, known as redbacks, are notorious for an unsettling tendency to kill and devour their male partners. Astronomers have noted similar behavior among two rare breeds of binary system that contain rapidly spinning neutron stars, also known as pulsars.
The essential features of black widow and redback binaries are that they place a normal but very low-mass star in close proximity to a millisecond pulsar, which has disastrous consequences for the star. Black widow systems contain stars that are both physically smaller and of much lower mass than those found in redbacks.
So far, astronomers have found at least 18 black widows and nine redbacks within the Milky Way, and additional members of each class have been discovered within the dense globular star clusters that orbit our galaxy.
One black widow system, named PSR J1311-3430 and discovered in 2012, sets the record for the tightest orbit of its class and contains one of the heaviest neutron stars known. The pulsar's featherweight companion, which is only a dozen or so times the mass of Jupiter and just 60 percent of its size, completes an orbit every 93 minutes -- less time than it takes to watch most movies.
The side of the star facing the pulsar is heated to more than 21,000 degrees Fahrenheit (nearly 12,000 C), or more than twice as hot as the sun's surface. Recent studies allow a range of values extending down to 2 solar masses for the pulsar, making it one of the most massive neutron stars known.
Watch the video to learn more about this system and its discovery from some of the scientists involved.
This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?11216
Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast:
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/iTunes/f0004_index.html
Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC
Or find us on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard

What is a Pulsar? | NASA Space Science HD Video

More space news and info at: http://www.coconutsciencelab.com - pulsars are neutron stars that accelerate charged particles to tremendous energies in their magnetospheres. These particles are ultimately responsible for the gamma-ray emission seen from pulsars.
The "pulses" of high-energy radiation we see from a pulsar are due to a misalignment of the neutron star's rotation axis and its magnetic axis. As the pulsar spins, the high-energy radiation beams generated within its magnetic field sweep across our line of sight somewhat like the beam of a lighthouse - we see the beam as a brief flash of light as it crosses our line of sight.
Please rate and comment, thanks!
Credit: NASA

NASA | What is a Pulsar?

A pulsar is a neutron star that emits beams of radiation that sweep through Earth's line of sight. Like a black hole, it is an endpoint to stellar evolution. The "pulses" of high-energy radiation we see from a pulsar are due to a misalignment of the neutron star's rotation axis and its magnetic axis. Pulsars seem to pulse from our perspective because the rotation of the neutron star causes the beam of radiation generated within the magnetic field to sweep in and out of our line of sight with a regular period, somewhat like the beam of light from a lighthouse. The stream of light is, in reality, continuous, but to a distant observer, it seems to wink on and off at regular intervals.
Pulsars are the original gamma-ray astronomy point sources. A few years after the discovery of pulsars by radio astronomers, the Crab and Vela pulsars were detected at gamma-ray energies. Pulsars accelerate particles to tremendous energies in their magnetospheres. These particles are ultimately responsible for the gamma-ray emission seen from pulsars.
In this video, gamma rays are shown in magenta. Data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope indicate that most of the gamma rays emitted by a pulsar arise from far above the pulsar's surface.
This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010800/a010861/index.html
Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast:
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/iTunes/f0004_index.html
Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC
Or find us on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard

Pulsar in Stellar Triple System

http://www.astropage.eu/index_news.php?id=1346 Pulsar in Dreifachsystem ist ein einzigartiges Gravitationslabor
This animation shows the unique triple-star system with a superdense neutron star and two white dwarf stars. The neutron star is a pulsar, emitting lighthouse-like beams of radiation as it spins on its axis. These beams, in blue, are seen sweeping through space as the neutron star rotates. At the start, you see this pulsar and its close companion white dwarf in orbit around their common center of mass. The animation zooms outward, showing this pair also in orbit with a more-distant, cooler white dwarf, and illustrates the motions of these three bodies. The entire system would fit within Earth's orbit around the Sun.
Credit: Bill Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

What Is A Pulsar?

This question comes from William.
He writes "Hi Fraser, I was wondering if you could do a video on pulsars like you did on quasars."
You got it.
Stars are held in perfect balance between the pressure of gravity pulling them inward, and the outward force of radiation.
Once stars runs out of fuel, they collapses in on themselves - it's the amount of mass decides what happens next.
The most massive stars detonate as supernovae, and can explode or collapse into black holes.
If they're less massive, like our Sun, they blast away their outer layers and then slowly cool down as white dwarfs.
But for stars between 1.4 and 3.2 times the mass of the Sun, they may still become supernovae, but they just don't have enough mass to make a black hole.
These medium mass objects end their lives as neutron stars, and some of these can become pulsars or magnetars.
Gravity overwhelms the atomic bonds of the matter in a neutron star, crushing protons and electrons together into neutrons. This is how they get their name.
A star that used to be more than a million kilometers wide is now less than 20 kilometers across.
This material is so dense, that a single sugar cube's worth weigh about 100 million tonnes on Earth.
And you would need to be traveling 100,000 km/s to escape a neutron star's pull - about 1/3rd the speed of light.
So that's how you get a neutron star. But what about these pulsars?
When these stars collapse, they maintain their angular momentum. But with a much smaller size, their rotational speed increases dramatically, spinning many times a second.
This relatively tiny, super dense object, emits a powerful blast of radiation along its magnetic field lines.
Although this beam of radiation doesn't necessarily line up with it's axis of rotation.
And so, from here on Earth, astronomers detect an intense beam of radio emissions several times a second, as it rotates around like a lighthouse beam.
This is a pulsar.
The first one was detected in 1967 by Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewis.
They detected a mysterious radio emission coming from a fixed point in the sky that peaked every 1.33 seconds.
Although they were certain it had a natural origin, they named it LGM-1, which stands for "little green men", and subsequent discoveries have helped astronomers discover the true nature of these strange objects.
Pulsars have been discovered emitting many different wavelengths of light, from radio to visible and even X and gamma rays.
There have been a total of 1600 found so far, and the fastest discovered emits 716 pulses a second.
When a pulsar first forms, it has the most energy and fastest rotational speed. As it releases electromagnetic power through its beams, it gradually slows down.
Within 10 to 100 million years, it slows to the point that its beams shut off and the pulsar becomes quiet.
When they are active, they spin with such uncanny regularity that they're used as timers by astronomers.
Pulsars help us search for gravitational waves, probe the interstellar medium, and even find extrasolar planets in orbit.
It has even been proposed that spacecraft could use them as beacons to help navigate around the Solar System.
On NASA's Voyager spacecraft, there are maps that show the direction of the Sun to 14 pulsars in our region. If aliens wanted to find our home planet, they couldn't ask for a more accurate map.
I hope that helps, William.

This animation represents the evolutionary process of a pulsar as it swings between X-ray and radio emission. The pulsar (left) is in a binary system with a low-mass star as a companion (right). The two objects orbit around their mutual centre of gravity; for clarity, this motion is not shown in the animation.
At the beginning of the animation, the pulsar spins very fast emitting two narrow beams of radio waves (shown in purple). Over several million years this rotation gradually slows down. Eventually, the gravitational pull of the pulsar starts drawing matter from the companion star. As the pulsar accretes matter via an accretion disc, it gains angular momentum and its rotation becomes extremely rapid again.
During the accretion process, the high density of accreted matter damps out the radio emission and is seen only in X-rays (shown as wide, white beams). When the accretion rate decreases, the pulsar's magnetosphere expands and pushes matter away. As a consequence, the X-ray emission becomes weaker, while the radio emission intensifies.
The pulsar swings back and forth between the two states several times over several hundreds of millions of years until it final slows down to become a purely radio-emitting pulsar, while its companion star has evolved into a white dwarf.
Read more: Missing link found between X-ray and radio pulsars http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Missing_link_found_between_X-ray_and_radio_pulsars%20
Credit: ESA

Millisecond Pulsar with Magnetic Field Structure

This animation illustrates how an old pulsar in a binary system can be reactivated -- and sped up to a millisecond spin -- by accreting gas from its companion star.
A pulsar is a rapidly rotating neutron star that emits pulses of radiation (such as X-rays and radio waves) at regular intervals. A millisecond pulsar is one with a rotational period between 1 and 10 milliseconds, or from 60,000 to 6,000 revolutions per minute. Pulsars form in supernova explosions, but even newborn pulsars don't spin at millisecond speeds, and they gradually slow down with age. If, however, a pulsar is a member of a binary system with a normal star, gas transferred from the companion can spin up an old, slow pulsar to the millisecond range.
For more information, go to http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/astronomers-uncover-a-transformer-pulsar
This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010100/a010144/

Pulsar Animation

Pulsars are thought to emit relatively narrow radio beams, shown as green in this animation. If these beams don't sweep toward Earth, astronomers cannot detect the radio signals. Pulsar gamma-ray emission (magenta) is thought to form a broader fan of radiation that can be detected even when the radio beam is unfavorably oriented. (No audio.) Credit: NASA/Fermi/Cruz deWilde

Best of 2013: Planets & Stars Size Comparison

Comparison of planets in our Solar System, and our Sun and stars throughout the universe.
NOTE: The scaling is not accurate in this video, and the last two stars are fake. Don't complain about it in the comments, just watch my new three part series that has no errors. Links are listed below.
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VJgN3UGyF8&t=3s
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXHp9U5I-xo&t=2s
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh_t645ntOs&t=1s

What are Pulsars?

An introduction to pulsars and neutron stars which focus on the properties that allow us to use them as extremely accurate celestial clocks. Part of a continuing series on the NANOGrav collaboration.
Let us know what you think of these videos by filling out our short survey at http://tinyurl.com/astronomy-pulsar. Thank you!
NANOGrav: http://www.nanograv.org
Pulsar sounds and profiles from the Jodrell Bank Telescope website
http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/
http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/pulsar/Education/Sounds/sounds.html

Unknown to the general populace, young men and women from around the globe are being raised in a secret, underground facility. Using a library of alien knowledge that was uncovered early in the 21st century—code name: The Quantum Guide—these future astronauts prepare for the day when they will set out to colonize the galaxy. They must learn to decode the myriad of enigmas that exist in the great beyond if there is to be any hope of the human race becoming an interstellar power.
Jarl Quarkson is one such student. His first lesson starts now.

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered the youngest known millisecond gamma-ray pulsar in an old globular cluster of stars. A pulsar is a type of neutron star that emits electromagnetic energy at periodic intervals; a millisecond pulsar does soe every one- to ten-milliseconds, or one one-thousandth of a second.. A neutron star is the closest thing to a black hole that astronomers can observe directly, crushing half a million times more mass than Earth into a sphere no larger than a city. This matter is so compressed that even a teaspoonful weighs as much as Mount Everest. Recent discoveries of more gamma-ray pulsars have pushed their number past 100.

NASA | Fermi Finds a Youthful Pulsar Among Ancient Stars

In three years, NASA's Fermi has detected more than 100 gamma-ray pulsars, but something new has appeared. Among a type of pulsar with ages typically numbering a billion years or more, Fermi has found one that appears to have been born only millions of years ago.
A pulsar is a type of neutron star that emits electromagnetic energy at periodic intervals. A neutron star is the closest thing to a black hole that astronomers can observe directly, crushing half a million times more mass than Earth into a sphere no larger than a city. This matter is so compressed that even a teaspoonful weighs as much as Mount Everest.
Millisecond pulsars are thought to achieve such speeds because they are gravitationally bound in binary systems with normal stars. During part of their stellar lives, gas flows from the normal star to the pulsar. Over time, the impact of this falling gas gradually spins up the pulsar's rotation.
Be sure to go here (http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/fermipulsar/) to see a new interactive map of all known pulsars.
This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: ‪http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?10858‬
Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast:
‪http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/iTunes/f0004_index.html‬
Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on facebook:
‪http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC‬
Or find us on Twitter:
‪http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard‬

Unexplained Gamma-Ray Pulsar

From NASA Astrophysics and Goddard Space Flight Center. In December 2010, a pair of mismatched stars in the southern constellation Crux whisked past each other at a distance closer than Venus orbits the sun. The system possesses a so-far unique blend of a hot and massive star with a compact fast-spinning pulsar. The pair's closest encounters occur every 3.4 years and each is marked by a sharp increase in gamma rays, the most extreme form of light.
The unique combination of stars, the long wait between close approaches, and periods of intense gamma-ray emission make this system irresistible to astrophysicists. Now, a team using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope to observe the 2010 encounter reports that the system displayed fascinating and unanticipated activity.
Every 3.4 years, pulsar B1259-63 dives twice through the gas disk surrounding the massive blue star it orbits. With each pass, it produces gamma rays. During the most recent event, NASA's Fermi observed that the pulsar's gamma-ray flare was much more intense the second time it plunged through the disk. Astronomers don't yet know why.
Few pairings in astronomy are as peculiar as high-mass binaries, where a hot blue-white star many times the sun's mass and temperature is joined by a compact companion no bigger than Earth -- and likely much smaller. Depending on the system, this companion may be a burned-out star known as a white dwarf, a city-sized remnant called a neutron star (also known as a pulsar) or, most exotically, a black hole.
Just four of these "odd couple" binaries were known to produce gamma rays, but in only one of them did astronomers know the nature of the compact object. That binary consists of a pulsar designated PSR B1259-63 and a 10th-magnitude Be-type star known as LS 2883. The pair lies 8,000 light-years away.
The pulsar is a fast-spinning neutron star with a strong magnetic field. This combination powers a lighthouse-like beam of energy, which astronomers can easily locate if the beam happens to sweep toward Earth. The beam from PSR B1259-63 was discovered in 1989 by the Parkes radio telescope in Australia. The neutron star is about the size of Washington, D.C., weighs about twice the sun's mass, and spins almost 21 times a second.
The pulsar follows an eccentric and steeply inclined orbit around LS 2883, which weighs roughly 24 solar masses and spans about nine times its size. This hot blue star sits embedded in a disk of gas that flows out from its equatorial region.
At closest approach, the pulsar passes less than 63 million miles from its star -- so close that it skirts the gas disk around the star's middle. The pulsar punches through the disk on the inbound leg of its orbit. Then it swings around the star at closest approach and plunges through the disk again on the way out.

NASA | Colliding Neutron Stars Create Black Hole and Gamma-ray Burst

Armed with state-of-the-art supercomputer models, scientists have shown that colliding neutron stars can produce the energetic jet required for a gamma-ray burst. Earlier simulations demonstrated that mergers could make black holes. Others had shown that the high-speed particle jets needed to make a gamma-ray burst would continue if placed in the swirling wreckage of a recent merger.
Now, the simulations reveal the middle step of the process--how the merging stars' magnetic field organizes itself into outwardly directed components capable of forming a jet. The Damiana supercomputer at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics needed six weeks to reveal the details of a process that unfolds in just 35 thousandths of a second--less than the blink of an eye.
Read more: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/gamma-ray-engines.html#.WA4phz_VTZE
This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: ‪http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?10740
Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast:
‪http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/iTunes/f0004_index.html‬
Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on facebook:
‪http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC‬
Or find us on Twitter:
‪http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard

Millisecond pulsars

Scott Ransom wins the American Astronomical Society's 2010 Helen B. Warner Prize! In this video, he explains what a millisecond pulsar is.

Watch the talented Reggie Watts perform at the Exploratorium August 9th, 2012. Reggie was at the Exploratorium for an Osher Fellowship, and he graciously joined us at the end of a live webcast on Mars to share a little of his own feelings about the red planet!

SPACETV.NET works hard to find all the great space content you're looking for from carefully selected quality sources, but we're always on the lookout for more. Please let us know if you know of any quality content we have not yet included!

All trademarks, logos, music, thumbnails and content within videos is owned by their respective copyright owners.

Views and opinions expressed in videos or external links do not represent SPACETV.NET or our sponsors.

All video content on this website comes from external sources including YouTube, Ustream and Livestream.